Show HN: I'm building a webapp for serious cyclists
cyclinganalytics.com
cyclinganalytics.com
The analytics look good, and I wish I had them for running, too. I'm not sure how different those would be.
My one comment about the site now is that for someone like me who has only ever ridden for fun (or a commute), it could benefit a lot from having some basic information about the electronic gear. Reviews, or a couple suggested models, or even just a link to a good website.
For example, I didn't even know that bicycle power meters existed before just now. It took a few minutes of googling to discover that they cost around $1000.
I knew about bike computers, but I don't know much about them, except all my friends seem to have Garmin computers, and they all seem to hate them (reliability and user interface). So I'd be interested to read about what other options there are.
It doesn't need to be encyclopedic -- just a few hints to get me started. Apple used to show 3 columns: Good, Better, Best. I thought that was a good way to summarize what the differences were, and what they cost.
You're not the only person to suggest providing information about how to get set up with equipment would be a good idea, so I'm thinking about doing something about that soon.
Garmin dominate the market at the moment. The other main option is SRM head units, which are popular in the pro peloton, but cost around $800 and don't have a GPS. It's possible to use a smartphone if you have an ANT+ (the Bluetooth-like wireless protocol that most power meters use) dongle, but I haven't heard of any cyclists out there doing that (I'm sure there are some though). Specialized are coming out with an ANT+ bike computer next year, and there are probably some other options. To be honest, although there were some problems a couple of years ago with the Garmin Edge 500 (which I have), I quite happy with my device with the more recent firmware updates.
1. Great UI. The Garmin Connect team should take note.
2. Consider generating best fit curves for the graph data, it's hard to get an idea of how fast you're going over time, especially when you ride in the city and traffic and stop lights cause much of the spikey data.
3. I know the focus is power here, but it would be nice to get the Y-axis units to change when all that is displays is HR or Speed.
4. If you work in running and swimming I will throw money at you.
Make something people want... and they will throw money at you.
1. Thankyou.
2. Adding optional data smoothing for the graph data is something I'd like to do soon.
3. The y-axis scales for power, speed and HR are independent, so it should work fine when there's no power data. Does it not work as well as I thought?
4. Unfortunately I'm not about to support other activities because I know very little about them, and at least while this is a one-man project, it pays to stay focussed. Hopefully someday...
People who are in to cycling don't need to know benefits, they know that logging this data is important to them. They are looking for a way to do it.
My critism is different. Once I signed up I didn't really understand how to use it. Maybe it is my lack of experience with cycling apps?
I'm targeting a niche market with this, but I'm not quite sure about the level that I should be talking to them. On one hand, it's easy to assume they know a fair bit about the data that the power meter they spent a couple of thousand dollars on produces, so I don't need to explain what everything is. On the other hand, that's probably a dangerous assumption that often isn't true, so the more explanation I give, the better. I'll make the front page better in time, but I'm not entirely sure how to strike the right balance.
What part of using it after signing up are you having difficulty with? Have you uploaded any rides? Email me at david@cyclinganalytics.com if you like.
I recently upgraded from a bike that I maxed its potential (older, rebuilt road bike) to a new bike where I am nowhere near its potential and I'm looking to improve my training to get to the next level.
I registered, clicked around, but didn't know what to do. For those that have a garmin and experience entering data in an online system, it is probably easy. For me, I was left wondering what I needed to do to get started.
That is just my personal experience which may not be worth addressing until you get more scale. If you think your platform can take share from other data platforms fast, you don't need me yet (or customers like me).
If you think you need to grab advancing cyclists not yet measuring themselves, my comment is worth considering. If you are in need of advancing your platform through new users, my recommendation would be to add a link to 3 levels of equipment you recommend. Base (to get started, as low price as possible). 2nd Tier (something that give both a trip computer and power measuring device), 3rd (some advanced tier)
(This also may be a terrible suggestion since I don’t know enough about the equipment, like whether every bike needs different stuff etc.)
*Remember, the person paying $2,000 for a bike and $80/year for a service like this has disposable income, but maybe not disposable time so it may be worth making it really fast to get set up, including equipment.
Providing more information about how to get started with equipment and my site is a good idea and I'll look at doing something about that. Users having disposable income but not disposable time is a great point.
If it were me, I'd focus on taking share to get a good number of users first, then worry about growing the market.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
The problem is probably more that there's too much white space between the image and the text, so it's not obvious you need to scroll on certain resolutions (iPad maybe as the text begins to appear on my laptop).
Jacob Nielsen was wrong.
The book to read to understand what is being shown at the moment is called "Training and Racing with a Power Meter".
1. http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/user/1000000/training-load
I bulk uploaded 23 rides, there was no clear indication when the upload was done and when I could navigate away from the page. I assumed it would continue processing rides in the background, but I guess not since I got an error and had to reupload my rides.
Some rider are showing 0 distance, like: http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ride/454237476011 http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ride/559913689347
The option for mph and lbs is a good idea if going after us market.
I see in privacy I can hide my house, but can I make my uploaded rides private? Privacy isn't clear.
Browser plugin for uploading would be nice.
Looks good, I'll keep an eye on it.
Also, the intro message after signup is a fantastic idea, as is using question mark footnotes, but again, I didn't notice them until I read the message.
It displays the little map and basic data for the rides when they're finished uploading, although now that you mention it, it's not obvious that you should be waiting for that rather than waiting for the progress bar to reach the end. And rides showing zero distance is something I haven't seen before. I'll look into that.
Privacy controls is a work in progress. At the moment, nothing is visible to anybody unless you give them a link to a ride, and then everything is visible to them, which certainly isn't ideal. Better privacy controls is near the top of my list of things to do.
I completely agree that a better way to upload rides is desirable. Are you thinking about the Strava upload interface?
I've thought about writing a small app that runs in the background, and every time a garmin is plugged in, it grabs the latest files and uploads them to training peaks, strava, garmin connect etc.
Having a small app running in the background that automatically uploads rides is exactly what I want to do someday.
And 'Pedal force vs. cadence', does this reveal where weak spots are in your stroke? Also does it show you your optimal cadence, based on speed and duration of ride. I think that would be great information to have.
Also, with strava I'd love to see when different sections are starting and ending so I know exactly when to gas it and stop, perhaps even how I'm progressing as I'm riding. This is pretty unrelated though to this app.
This isn't able to show any weak spots in your stroke because this data is only being recorded once every second. I think you need a Wattbike or similar to show exactly what your pedal stroke looks like. I'm not sure how to work out optimal cadence, but it sounds like something worth thinking about.
Are you talking about when you're using the Strava phone app? I haven't used it, but I'd definitely be in favour of it showing when you're starting segments and doing other smart stuff like that. I'm planning on doing a bit more Strava integration with my site too, starting with getting the Strava segments for a ride.
Thanks for your feedback!
Yes, Strava phone app. I don't have the fancy smancy garmins/power meters/etc. Does it show though on a Garmin when you enter a segment if you are running Strava?
Nah, us Garmin users don't even have an app on our devices, we just upload our data to their website when we get home (just like it works with my site).
Strava does do this. If you look at a ride, note the difference between Elapsed Time and Time. Elapsed Time is the time you spent moving.
They're cycling hobbyist though but bike quite often.
And as power meters become cheaper and more popular, more people will be looking for ways to interpret that data. Some will turn to Hunter and Coggan's book or to a coach, but some will inevitably turn to sites such as yours for guidance. You already seem to have started down that path, but the more you can do to guide and educate inexperienced power meter users, the better you'll do.
Didn't know about power meters yet, interesting technology.
http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/user/1000000
Great work!
are you using flask for this? we've got 2 things using it atm, and it's been fantastic.
One of the first things I made my site do was upload rides to Strava, because I was tired of having to upload my rides to multiple apps.
Have you checked out Golden Cheetah? It's got most of what you have, plus it can control computrainers, etc. It's a great cross platform desktop app, but the UI needs some loving.
What about tools to help edit out unwanted sections of a recorded ride?
My type of riding, mainly long distance (Audax), means rides of 9 hours or more (up to 116 hours) with various length stops for food and/or naps (for the multi-day rides). It was a lot of faff with Golden Cheetah (or even editing the .tcx files directly) to trim out sections where I'd stopped and accidentally left the Garmin recording.
Some nice way of selecting a chunk of a ride (whilst either looking at a zoomed in map or selecting a section in the speed/power/cadence/HR graph) and then moving it to a new 'lap' (where it could be kept or deleted) would be very useful.
Let me know if you need some example large data files to test scalability. I've got one .tcx file (with heart rate, cadence and power data) that's 41MB (would have been 53MB if I hadn't had to reset the GPS part way through).